RENTON — Not long into his usual Wednesday media session, Richard Sherman transformed from football player to politician with an agenda.
Specifically, the Seattle Seahawks cornerback was campaigning for a couple of teammates he feels aren’t getting the recognition they deserves.
“Bobby Wagner is having an incredible year,” Sherman said of Seattle’s third-year middle linebacker. “Obviously the last couple years, our linebackers have been a little bit over shadowed; K.J. Wright also … So voters, everybody out there, Bobby Wagner is a Pro Bowl player. He should be in the Defensive Player of the Year race as well.”
And if you can get past the fact that Sherman has to stump for his overlooked middle linebacker because his middle linebacker is overlooked, at least in part, due to the well-deserved attention given to the secondary, then you’ll realize that the man has a point. Wagner has been the team’s leading tackler during the past three years, yet the player taken a round ahead of Russell Wilson is regularly overshadowed by Seattle’s star-studded secondary, as well as the pass rush that played such a big role in last year’s Super Bowl winning season.
Wagner, of course, is used to it by now. He has spent his NFL career losing out on individual honors given to fellow class of 2012 linebacker Luke Kuechly, who beat Wagner for defensive rookie of the year honors and is a big reason why Wagner has yet to make the Pro Bowl. And the snubs go much further back than that. Wagner received just one Division I offer out of Colony High School in Ontario, Calif., then he came into the draft having to prove a player out of Utah State could play in the NFL.
“It’s nothing new,” Wagner said. “Coming out of the draft, ‘He’s a nobody because he went to Utah State.’ It’s nothing at this point, it’s just a chip on the shoulder that’s always going to be there.”
Yet in spite of all of this, Wagner probably isn’t even the most overlooked player on his own defense. Just ask hype man Richard Sherman about defensive tackle Brandon Mebane.
“C’mon, this is probably a three-years-running Pro Bowl snub,” Sherman said. “Brandon Mebane is like the engine that helps our defense go.”
And it’s fitting that Wagner and Mebane, who in his eighth season, “may be playing the best he’s played,” according to Pete Carroll, are co-captains of the good ship Pro Bowl Snub. Fitting because both make their biggest impact when the other is on his game. While Mebane doesn’t put up big stats as a defensive tackle — though his 163 tackles since 2011 are fifth most in the NFL by an interior lineman over that span — his ability to occupy blockers and create havoc are a big part of why Wagner is one of the league leaders in tackles.
“He’s the reason I play as good as I play,” Wagner said. “He does a great job keeping guys off of me. I’m surprised nobody notices how great he’s been playing.”
Or as linebackers coach Ken Norton Jr. puts it: “We’re linebackers; we back the line. So when the line does their job, it makes our job a lot easier.”
And if Wagner and the rest of the linebackers aren’t making plays, the efforts of Mebane and the rest of the linemen goes for naught, and they don’t get the credit they deserve. That symbiotic relationship between line and linebackers, between Mebane and Wagner, is a big reason why the Seahawks have what is currently the stingiest run defense in the NFL, allowing just 62.3 rushing yards per game.
Mebane rarely talks about himself or his play. Instead, almost every time a reporter approaches, he breaks into song: “I’m just a nobody, trying to tell everybody, about somebody, who can save anybody.”
“I don’t do nothing but come to work,” he says after a few lines of the Williams Brothers song. “I don’t do nothing. I’m not the guy y’all want to talk to.
But Mebane will jokingly note that, “I’m not All-Pro, I’m not All American … I mean, that’s (Sherman’s) opinion, but if you look at Wikipedia, it’s not on there.”
Perhaps after this season those honors will be next to the name of Seattle’s longest tenured player, or its tackle-machine at middle linebacker. For now, however, two of Seattle’s best, and yes, oftentimes overlooked players will just have to be content playing big roles on the NFL’s best defense.
“It doesn’t (bother me),” Wagner said of being overlooked. “As long as these guys in this locker room recognize what I do, that’s all that matters to me. As far as the outside, the outside will come eventually.”
If Sherman, one of the NFL’s most visible players, keeps this up, eventually could come soon for two players who have been huge parts of Seattle’s defensive success.
Herald Columnist John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com
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